if u watch this video of watchdogs takedowns it will illustrate what i mean, the players character initiates the takedown, there are a few different types of takedowns sometimes depending on what weapon is equipped and what position the player is relative to the victim. But as u can see the victim plays an animation that goes with the takedown. I was looking for a good way to do that, select a takedown at random and have the victim character play the takedown that goes with it

if u watch this video of watchdogs takedowns it will illustrate what i mean, the players character initiates the takedown, there are a few different types of takedowns sometimes depending on what weapon is equipped and what position the player is relative to the victim. But as u can see the victim plays an animation that goes with the takedown. I was looking for a good way to do that, select a takedown at random and have the victim character play the takedown that goes with it

I would not recommend you to do scripted battle sequences like in watch dogs, they are stupid, taking down an opponent should depend on skill not on pressing a button.
I imagine take downs more a special thing, like if you catch the enemy unprepared from behind, you can take them down in a short sequence. Or as a finishing move like in doom, but before you can finish an enemy you had to damage him enough first.
Don't think too complicated, make the simple version work first, you also save work on animations, since making animations can be complicated as well.

I only want a takedown when the victim is not aware of the attackers presence so only when the attacker is either on one of the sides or behind, and never when the attacker is sprinting. The video in watchdogs was to show u the animations. I have access to a motion capture suite so making the animations isn't the most difficult just a bit of cleanup to be done afterwards is all but for testing purposes i will be hand animating my test stick figure men.

I have TAIK installed and will see if I can't help you get started. It is what you are looking for. Its a stealth move and works from four positions. Front back left right. I certainly wish that Bryce had included the source Blender files but hey. He put a ton of work into it. Amazing really. I will try to post back tonight. I'm afraid I'm crazy busy.

1st: Disable player movement and victim AI (note: if the conditions for the fatality are met).
2nd: Move the player and the victim to the initial positions and rotations.
3rd: Just use playThread with both of them for the animations they need.
4th: When the animation is finished, do the damage and re-enable the AI and the movement of the player.

Issues:
-Maybe the player can't be animated correctly. A little C++ change to disable the standard animations for Player class could be needed.
-Conditions that interfere in the animation (like being attacked by another enemy).
-To move to the correct starting locations could be a bit abrupt.

no difficulty its very easy to get two characters to play an animation, its getting them to play the correct animation that i want to make sure im doing it the most efficient way. The takedown is going to lead to a death straight away so the victim is already dead when the takedown starts and there will be no ai its purely multiplayer.

Sorry for the late post. It appears your idea seems to be how Bryce did it. He has 8 animations named ft1_loser, ft1_winner, ft2_loser, ft2_winner....and so on. For each direction of killing and being killed. He uses the prefix "ft1" through "ft4" and specifies this when a takedown is initiated. He adds some timing for how long it takes for each takedown, so that either winner or loser can be shot by a third party during the takedown. I hope Bryce doesn't mind but I'll post some sample code. This is from TAIKTakedown.cs

that is perfect thank you! i can see now how bryce has done it i might hardcode this into the engine as its own class so instead of a weapon you make different states and parameters for a takedown instead